Mozilla Sunbird/ical, Calendar Apps Options

[mooooooooooopo]

I've been playing with Mozilla Sunbird recently (their calendar program), it's rather nifty - it supports the vCal format used by Apple iCal and lots of personal organiser calendar apps - and like them supports the rather nifty feature of allowing you to "subscribe" to calendars hosted on websites and the like.

First of I wondered if anyone else on the forum had tried it (I was fiddling with it since my summer holidays got rather full and I wanted to avoid stuff clashing)?

Secondly I was wondering what Mata and the rest of the forum think about the concept of having a Matazone calendar for storing the dates of meets and so forth. Yeah, I know there's the forum calendar but it tends to get ignored and can't be merged with ones own calendar or viewed when you are offline. Since it would only contain meets and similar it would be low maintenance - just a calendar file hosted on the server.

I've already found it pretty useful. Funked_Out)Frogg sent me her calendar file with the meet dates and dates Candice and Jaq arrive in the UK and I sent the file to Candice so we could plan summer stuff. Yay! Organisation.

The other good things is vCal is a widely supported format supported by a lot of programs so there's only one file to be kept up to date (and I guess it wouldn't change that often anyways).

Just an idea inspired by recent planning events, I'm looking for criticism, opinions and ideas so don't hesitate to flame (though sensible comments are more welcome).

Edit: Ooops, managed to post this in the wrong forum. Mods, can you move it please? Ta.

[Mata]

Sounds interesting. Let me know what I'd need to do/email me the file, and I'll try and get it set up.

[mooooooooooopo]

Okay, I've updated my Matameet calendar to include the north east meet, put in some more information and add a link to the appropriate thread for each entry.

The calendar file is sat at http://www.moop.org.uk/~moop/ical/MatameetCalendar.ics at the moment, though it's not likely to be very stable thanks to me moving house on Friday.

To import it you can either download and double click the file and your calendar app (if it's installed) will ask how you want to import it, alternatively you can tell it to subscribe to the online version of the calendar so it'll be automatically updated if it changes.

Sunbird is available here and runs on most platforms - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html
Apple users can use either Sunbird or Apple iCal which comes with Apple iLife so should be installed on most new Macs.

To subscribe with Sunbird select File -> Subscribe Remote Calendar, enter a calendar name, choose a colour for the events from the calendar, copy and paste the URL in the Remote Server URL Box and hit ok.

To subscribe with iCal select Calendar -> Subscribe, copy the URL in and click OK then enter the settings you want and click ok once more.

Mata, if you could copy the calendar file over to your server that would be useful. I don't mind hosting the file but I'm uncertain as to whether my server will be up at all after the next few weeks. Thanks.

[Mata]

Okay, that's now online here:

http://www.matazone.co.uk/other/MatazoneCalendar.ics

I've not really got time to fiddle around and get the hang of this, so if people want to update a copy of it and send me new versions when things are added then I'm happy to host it.

[mooooooooooopo]

Nice one.

[Greeneyes]

Ehm, just as a slightly related note, I'm having trouble importing the file in M$ Outlook. It downloads, but instead of adding lots of entries for each, it just seems to add the first on the list. Anyone know how to do this?

[mooooooooooopo]

I can't say I've tried Outlook, or even have it installed.

Out of interest, can Outlook subscribe (ie. the file stays online and gets checked regularly) by the app or do you have to download and import? The subscription is the really cool (but simple really) feature.

[Greeneyes]

I can't seem to find a specific subscription thingie. I couldn't find anything in particular, so I just shoved the URL in a toolbar, and it downloaded it and created a new calender entry.

[froggle-rock]

Woohoo, I'm all subscribed using iCal. Tis the bomb diggity

[pgrmdave]

Tis the bomb diggity

So 'tis, so 'tis...